South Hams Friends of the Earth

FRIENDS OF THE EARTH
Community Rights Resource Pack

This pack is to help local people and communities get their voice heard in decisions which affect them. It covers the three most important areas where people have rights in environmental decision-making:
• your right to know
• your right to participate
• your right to challenge

OUR RECYCLING
WHERE DOES IT ALL GO?

Waste from South Hams District Council’s kerbside recycling scheme is taken initially to the council's contractor, Severnside’s depot in Plymouth where it is sorted and baled ready for transporting for recycling. See www.severnside.com

BLUE SACKS
1. Paper and cardboard – reprocessed in the UK by St Regis Paper Company at Kemsley Paper Mill, Kent.

Part of the suite of the new Big Ask materials is an Action Guide on ‘Engaging Community Groups’:

community.foe.co.uk.

To help you to do this, we have put together a workshop for you to use.

If you are interested in finding out more we are organising two training days - to talk you through the workshop and any other queries you may have about how to engage community groups.

Birmingham 10 March, 10:30-5.00pm (Carrs Lane Church)

London 31 March, 10:30-5.00pm, (Friends of the Earth London office)

Well I made it back in one piece. The journey from Dorchester to Exeter was one of the toughest days - across the grain of the country in places like Lyme Regis where I was forced onto main roads again.

I've collected a lot of material along the way, and there will be much to reflect on before I give a presentation to the group before too long. Thanks to all those who sponsored me, and look forward to seeing you all again.

After two and a half months it was good to reach the sea - the end is now in sight. I have arranged to meet Sara in Cherbourg on September 7th - our 15th wedding anniversary, and we will sail back to Poole on the 10th. I hope to see some of you on Sept. 17th.

Cycling across Paris was a hair-raising experience - something I had never done, even when I lived there. The French cities I have passed have been doing some positive things with public transport, but the culture is still much more car dominated than the parts of Germany and Switzerland I saw.

This trip must have improved my Fre

I didn't fully appreciate quite how good it was cycling in Freiburg and district until I crossed the Rhine: boy racers, noisy mopeds pulling vertical wheelies, cycle paths like the British ones: discontinuous, full of holes and covered with glass - bienvenue en France!

The climb through les Vosges via le Col du Bonhomme was my worst day of the trip. The weather was foul, and I had no alternative to this vile Route Nationale, which climbs for over 20 km with double articulated HGVs whistling past my left ear! Added to which, the cold (yes the weather has changed that much) and rain was aggravating my aching right knee.

Vauban, Freiburg - just over half of the district is carfree.

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Here I am. Freiburg is a wonderful city for cycling. I have collected lots of material (although the time seems to be running out faster than I wanted) and taken many photographs. Vauban, the carfree district is pretty much as I expected. I am biased, but it does seem to me this shows a better way to live in the future. To give just one example, a neighbour here has just taken his two sons aged 7 and 5 on holiday. They are cycling straight out from home across the Rhine into France. Both of them are allowed to cycle pretty much where they like around the area where they live in Vauban.

I've now passed the 1000 mile mark. Subtle changes in the architecture, if not the climate, which is unrelenting, tell me I'm moving back into Northern France, Northern Europe, and closer to Germany.

Dole in the Jura region is a gem of a town. Apart from the heat, this whole area is excellent for cycling. tarmaced paths follow old railway lines or canals in and out of most of the main towns, and many have camp sites close to the town or city centres.

On the minus side, the mosquito season has begun. Ironically it was the first time I spent a night in a hotel (Montbéliard doesn't have a camp site) that I was eaten alive. I spent much of the night hunting down the culprits, then after closing the window, nearly suffocated until I fell asleep a couple of hours before I was due to get up again!

I have now crossed the méridienne verte - the line which divides France into East and West, and I'm also North of the Loire again, so finally in the North-Eastern quarter of the country, the Swiss border doesn't seem too far off.

If stayed a couple of weeks at my father's house in Aubusson - I was ill for a few days, but everything seems to be working again now!

There is no let-up on the heat. I now set the alarm for 5.15 every morning and try to reach my destination by lunchtime. The afternoons are useless for anything apart from lying down and drinking water.

The climate here is changing - that is what people are telling me: "we never used to have summers like this".

We arrived here, at my father's home, last weekend and I have just waved goodbye to Sara on one the train of the day, heading home this morning.

The heat was becoming rather oppressive last week. On our last day of cycling we left Gueret at 6.15 am to arrive before the mid-day heat. Travelling like this really makes you appreciate our much-maligned weather. I was thinking, in 11 years in Devon I cannot recall a single day when I was unable to cycle, walk, do anything outdoors because it was too hot, too cold, too dangerous (yes, I have done cycling events through the worst of our storms on Dartmoor). Here, the mid-day temperatures frequently reach the mid 30s after a winter where they reached minus 22. My father is enjoying his new life here, but the climate is the one thing he would swap back for the UK any day.